Chaucer Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture

A New Companion to Chaucer Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture

This series offers comprehensive, newly written surveys of key periods and movements and certain major authors, in English literary culture and history. Extensive volumes provide new perspectives and positions on contexts and on canonical and post‐canonical texts, orientating the beginning student in new fields of study and providing the experienced undergraduate and new graduate with current and new directions, as pioneered and developed by leading scholars in the field.

Published Recently 78. A Companion to American Literary Studies Edited by Caroline F. Levander and Robert S. Levine 79. A New Companion to the Gothic Edited by David Punter 80. A Companion to the American Novel Edited by Alfred Bendixen 81. A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation Edited by Deborah Cartmell 82. A Companion to George Eliot Edited by Amanda Anderson and Harry E. Shaw 83. A Companion to Creative Writing Edited by Graeme Harper 84. A Companion to British Literature, 4 volumes Edited by Robert DeMaria, Jr., Heesok Chang, and Samantha Zacher 85. A Companion to American Gothic Edited by Charles L. Crow 86. A Companion to Translation Studies Edited by Sandra Bermann and Catherine Porter 87. A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture Edited by Herbert F. Tucker 88. A Companion to Modernist Poetry Edited by David E. Chinitz and Gail McDonald 89. A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien Edited by Stuart D. Lee 90. A Companion to the English Novel Edited by Stephen Arata, Madigan Haley, J. Paul Hunter, and Jennifer Wicke 91. A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance Edited by Cherene Sherrard‐Johnson 92. A Companion to Modern Chinese Literature Edited by Yingjin Zhang 93. A New Companion to Digital Humanities Edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth 94. A Companion to Virginia Woolf Edited by Jessica Berman 95. A New Companion to Milton Edited by Thomas Corns 96. A Companion to the Brontës Edited by Diane Long Hoeveler and Deborah Denenholz Morse 97. A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, Second Edition Edited by Dympna Callaghan 98. A New Companion to Renaissance Drama Edited by Arthur F. Kinney and Thomas Hopper 99. A Companion to Literary Theory Edited by David Richter 100. A Companion to Literary Biography Edited by Richard Bradford 101. A New Companion to Chaucer Edited by Peter Brown

0004255825.INDD 2 03/07/2019 10:29:29 AM A New Companion to Chaucer

Edited by Peter Brown This edition first published 2019 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. The right of Peter Brown to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law. Registered Offices John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial Office The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Names: Brown, Peter, 1948– editor. Title: A new companion to Chaucer / edited by Peter Brown. Description: First edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2019. | Series: Blackwell companions to literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018059853 (print) | LCCN 2018059951 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118902240 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781118902233 (ePub) | ISBN 9781118902257 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400–Criticism and interpretation–Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Literature and society–England–History–To 1500. | Civilization, Medieval, in literature. | England–Intellectual life–1066-1485. | England–Civilization–1066-1485. Classification: LCC PR1906.5 (ebook) | LCC PR1906.5 .N49 2019 (print) | DDC 821/.1–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059853 Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: ©Manuscript and Chaucer portrait/Lebrecht Authors/Bridgeman Images Set in 10.5/12.5pt Garamond by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

0004255825.INDD 4 03/07/2019 10:29:30 AM Contents

List of Illustrations ix The Contributors xi Acknowledgements xvii Abbreviations xix

The Idea of a Chaucer Companion 1 Peter Brown 1 Afterlives 7 Candace Barrington and Jonathan Hsy 2 Auctorite 21 Andrew Galloway 3 Biography 37 Jane Griffiths 4 Bodies 51 Linda Ehrsam Voigts 5 Bohemia 71 Alfred Thomas 6 Chivalry 87 Derek Brewer and Barry Windeatt 7 Comedy 105 Laura Kendrick 8 Emotion 123 Sarah McNamer vi Contents

9 Ethnicity 137 Kathy Lavezzo 10 Flemings 151 Michael Hanrahan 11 France 167 Michael Hanly 12 Genre 185 Caroline D. Eckhardt 13 Ideology 201 Stephen H. Rigby 14 Italy 213 David Wallace 15 Language 227 David Burnley and Graham Williams 16 London 243 Peter Guy Brown 17 Love 255 Helen Phillips 18 Narrative 269 Robert R. Edwards 19 Other Thought‐Worlds 283 Susanna Fein 20 Pagan Survivals 297 John M. Fyler 21 Patronage 307 Jenni Nuttall 22 Personal Identity 319 Lynn Staley 23 Pilgrimage and Travel 331 Sebastian Sobecki 24 Religion 345 Nicholas Watson 25 Richard II 359 James Simpson 26 Science 379 Irma Taavitsainen and Daniela Landert Contents vii

27 The Senses 395 Marion Turner 28 Sexualities 409 Masha Raskolnikov 29 Sin 421 Ryan Perry 30 Social Structures 435 Robert Swanson 31 Style 451 John F. Plummer 32 Texts 461 Tim William Machan 33 Things 475 Michael Van Dussen 34 Translation 487 Roger Ellis 35 Visualizing 501 Sarah Stanbury 36 Women 515 Nicky Hallett

Index 527

List of Illustrations

3.1 Chaucer’s family tree: “The Progenie of Geffrey Chaucer” from Thomas Speght’s edition of Chaucer’s Works (1598). [Oxford, Bodleian Library.] 38 4.1 Zodiac man. From the Apocalypse of St. John. London, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, Western MS 49, f. 43v (c. 1420?). [Wellcome Trust Medical Photographic Library.] 52 4.2 The sanguine body and personality. From the Liber cosmographiae of John de Foxton. Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R.15.21, fo. 12v (15th cent.). [By permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge] (eTK 0894K). 54 4.3 Personification of the planetary force of Mars. From the Liber cosmographiae of John de Foxton. Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R.15.21, f. 44v (15th. cent.). [By permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge] (eTK 0894K). 56 5.1 Coronation of a king and queen. Liber regalis, c. 1382 or 1390s. London, Westminster Abbey, MS. 38, f. 47. Copyright Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 78 5.2 Portrait of Richard II. London, Westminster Abbey. Copyright Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 79 5.3 Tomb effigies of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, 1395. London, Westminster Abbey, Chapel of Edward the Confessor. Copyright Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 81 7.1 Fart‐sniffer misericord carving. Choir stall in the church of Saint Pierre in Saumur, France (c. 1475). [Photo: author.] 112 9.1 The scourging of Christ. Manchester, University of Manchester John Rylands Library, MS Latin 24, f. 151r. [Copyright of University of Manchester.] 142 10.1 Parishes of St. Mary Somerset, St. Martin Vintry, and St. Lawrence Pountney. [Adapted from a map first published in Historic Towns Atlas, iii. © The Historic Towns Trust, 1989.] 159 19.1 The Three Living and the Three Dead. From the De Lisle Psalter. London, British Library, MS Arundel 83 II, f. 127 (after 1308). [By permission of the British Library]. 293 x List of Illustrations

25.1 The Wilton Diptych. English or French (?), c. 1395–6. [© The National Gallery, London. Bought with a special grant and contributions from Samuel Courtauld, Viscount Rothermere, C. T. Stoop, and The Art Fund, 1929.] 361 26.1 Appropriation of a lunary: the original book owner’s notes and sketches in London, British Library, MS Harley 1735, f. 7r. [By permission of the British Library]. 383 26.2 Alchemical processes and receipts. From Raimón Llull, Ymage de vie. London, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, Western MS 446, f. 14v (late 15th cent.). [Wellcome Trust Medical Photographic Library.] 391 32.1 The Franklin’s Prologue. From the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. HM EL 26 C9, f. 123v (c. 1410). The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 468 35.1 A messenger hands an image of the lady to Machaut. From Le Livre dou voir dit by Guillaume de Machaut. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fonds français 1584, f. 235v (between 1370 and 1377, probably Reims) [Cliché Bibliothèque nationale de France.] 502 The Contributors

Candace Barrington, Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, pursues two research interests. One studies medieval England’s legal and literary discourse, leading to several articles and coedited volumes. The other examines Chaucer’s popular reception, resulting in American Chaucers (2007) plus numerous articles. With Jonathan Hsy, she directs Global Chaucers. She is a founding member of the collaborative developing the Open Access Companion to The Canterbury Tales, a free, online introduction reaching Chaucer’s global audience. †Derek Brewer (1923–2008) was Professor of English in the University of Cambridge and Master of Emmanuel College until retirement in 1990. A prolific critic and scholar of medieval English literature in a career spanning 60 years, he also founded, with Richard Barber, the academic press Boydell and Brewer for the advancement of medieval studies. In the 1950s he taught for two years in Japan, which deeply informed his understanding of the role of honor in societies. Having seen active service in Italy in the Second World War he greatly savored, in later life, being the only academic in the room who had been a soldier in battle and experienced the soldierly chivalry of warfare. Peter Brown is the author of Geoffrey Chaucer for the Oxford World’s Classics Authors in Context series (2011), Chaucer and the Making of Optical Space (2007), and editor of The Blackwell Companion to English Literature and Culture c. 1350–c. 1400 (2006). He is Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Kent and Academic Director of its postgraduate Paris School of Arts and Culture. Peter Guy Brown is an independent scholar. He spent most of his professional life as a jour- nalist on the London Times and The Independent. He then took a Master’s in medieval history and literature at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is currently researching medieval glovers and summoners. †David Burnley was Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield until his death in 2001. He published numerous articles on medieval language and literature as well as the history of English and is the author of Chaucer’s Language and the Philosophers’ Tradition xii Te Contributor

(1979), A Guide to Chaucer’s Language (1983), an annotated bibliography The Language of Middle English Literature (1994, with M. Tajima), and Courtliness and Language in Medieval England (1998). These and other works, as well as the legacy carried on by his students, are testament to his status as one of the preeminent scholars of medieval English. Caroline D. Eckhardt is the Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the Pennsylvania State University. She has written on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and other Chaucerian topics, on medieval chronicles, and on Arthurian literature, including the historical and political uses of the prophecies of Merlin. She is editor of the two‐volume edition of Castleford’s Chronicle, or The Boke of Brut for the Early English Text Society (1996). Robert R. Edwards is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. His most recent book is Invention and Authorship in Medieval England (2017). His earlier books include The Flight from Desire: Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer (2006), Chaucer and Boccaccio: Antiquity and Modernity (2002), The Dream of Chaucer: Representation and Reflection in Chaucer’s Early Narrative (1989), and editions of John Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes (2001) and Troy Book (1998). Roger Ellis retired as Reader in the School of English at the University of Cardiff in 2003. He has written on Chaucer, Hoccleve, the Middle English mystics, St Birgitta of Sweden and the religious order she founded, and medieval translation. In 1987 he founded a conference on translation in the Middle Ages, published as The Medieval Translator; 16 volumes have so far appeared. Susanna Fein is Professor of English at Kent State University and editor of The Chaucer Review. She has coedited (with David Raybin) the collections Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (2010) and Chaucer: Visual Approaches (2016) and has published widely on Middle English poetry and medieval manuscripts, including a three‐volume edition/translation of the trilingual contents of London, British Library MS Harley 2253 (2014–15). John M. Fyler is Professor of English at Tufts University and Lecturer at the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English. He edited the House of Fame for the Riverside Chaucer and has published Chaucer and Ovid (1979) and Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun (2007), as well as a number of essays. He has been awarded several fellowships, including from the American Council of Learned Societies and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Andrew Galloway is Professor of English at Cornell University, where he has directed the Medieval Studies Program and chaired the Department of English. His books include The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 1 (2006), Medieval Literature and Culture (2006), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Culture (2011), and The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman (with Andrew Cole, 2014). He has published over eighty essays, chapters, and encyclo- pedia entries on literature and culture in medieval England. Jane Griffiths is a Fellow and Tutor in English at Wadham College, Oxford. Her monographs, John Skelton and Poetic Authority (2006) and Diverting Authorities: Experimental Glossing Practices in Manuscript and Print (2014), are both published by Oxford University Press. Nicky Hallett retired as a Reader from the School of English at the University of Sheffield. She has published essays on medieval literature and auto/biography, and books on nuns’ life‐writing, h Contributor xiii including The Senses in Religious Communities, 1600–1800: Early Modern “Convents of Pleasure” (2013); Life‐Writing: English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800 (2012); Lives of Spirit: English Carmelite Self‐Writing of the Early Modern Period (2007); and Witchcraft, Exorcism and the Politics of Possession in a Seventeenth‐Century Convent (2007). Michael Hanly is Professor of English at Washington State University and researcher in a medieval history unit, based in Paris, of the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS‐UMR 8589 “LAMOP”). His publications include articles and book chapters dedicated to trans‐European political and literary culture in the late fourteenth century, a monograph examining the multilingual relationships in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, and a critical edition and translation of Honorat Bonet’s L’Apparicion maistre Jehan de Meun (1398). He is working on a project examining international cultural exchange in the time of Chaucer, focusing upon the political milieu of the diplomat and author Philippe de Mézières. Michael Hanrahan is Director of Curricular and Research Computing at Bates College. He has published widely on late fourteenth‐century English literature and culture, computing and English studies, and technology and pedagogy. He recently coedited a special issue on digital medieval manuscript cultures for Archive Journal (2018) and is currently working on “Mapping 1381,” which uses Geographic Information Systems to visualize the social networks that enabled the rebels to organize and mobilize during the Peasants’ Revolt. Jonathan Hsy is Associate Professor of English at George Washington University and cofounder of its Digital Humanities Institute. His interests span translation theory, media studies, pop culture medievalism, and disability history. He is author of Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature (2013) and codirects the Global Chaucers project with Candace Barrington; his individual and coauthored works on appropriation of medieval texts in modern media have appeared in Accessus, postmedieval, and PMLA. Laura Kendrick, emeritus professor at the Université de Versailles / Paris‐Saclay, belongs to the research center there on the dynamics of heritage and culture (DYPAC). She is also a member of the French team reediting the complete works of Eustache Deschamps and of a national research group studying the power of lists in the Middle Ages (POLIMA). Daniela Landert is a senior research and teaching associate in English linguistics at the University of Zurich. Her research interests include historical pragmatics, corpus pragmatics, modality, mass media communication, and the pragmatics of fiction. She is the author of a monograph on Personalisation in Mass Media Communication (Benjamins, 2014). Currently, she is working on a project in historical corpus pragmatics, in which she investigates epistemic and evidential stance in early modern English. Kathy Lavezzo is Professor of English at the University of Iowa. She is the editor of Imagining a Medieval English Nation (2004) and the author of Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature and English Identity, 1000–1534 (2006) and The Accommodated Jew: English Antisemitism from Bede to Milton (2016). She is writing a book about race in medieval Europe. Tim William Machan is Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. His teaching and research involve both medieval language and literature and historical English linguistics. His most recent books are (ed., with Jón Karl Helgason) From Iceland to the Americas: Vinland and Historical Imagination (forthcoming); (ed.) Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories, 500–1500 (2016); and What Is English?: And Why Should We Care? (2013). xiv Te Contributor

Sarah McNamer teaches English and Medieval Studies at Georgetown University. She is the author of Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion 2009) and editor of Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text (2018) and essays on literature and the history of emotion. She is currently at work on a book on the Pearl‐poet. Jenni Nuttall is Fellow and Lecturer in Old and Middle English at St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. She is writing a book about poetic terminology, experiment, and innovation in Middle English and Middle Scots poetry. Ryan Perry is interested in the production of Middle English literature in various genres, but with a particular interest in catechetic and devotional texts. He publishes on the transmission and utilities of these kinds of texts for their readers and studies what the manuscript contexts might tell us about the producers and consumers of religious literature in the late Middle Ages. Helen Phillips was until retirement Professor of Medieval Literature at Cardiff University. Her research and publications are mostly in medieval literature and medievalism, especially Chaucer, dream poems, and outlaw traditions. She has also published on modernist literature and art. John F. Plummer is Professor of English Emeritus at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of The Summoner’s Tale: A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1995) and articles on Chaucer, Arthurian romance, and medieval drama and lyrics. With Florence Ridley, he has recently completed The Friar’s Tale: A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Masha Raskolnikov is Associate Professor of English at Cornell University. She is primarily interested in critical theory as a project of unmaking “common sense,” and in working with medieval literature as a means of doing so; she is also interested in feminist, lesbian, gay, and transgender/transsexual studies. The author of Body Against Soul: Gender and Sowlehele in Middle English Allegory (2009), she is currently working on a book on the rhetorical mode of the apology. Stephen H. Rigby is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Manchester. He has published widely on the society and economy of late‐medieval England, on medieval social and political thought, and on medieval English literature. James Simpson is Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. He was formerly Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge. His most recent books are Reform and Cultural Revolution, volume 2 in the Oxford English Literary History (2002); Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (2007); and Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo‐American Tradition (2010). Sebastian Sobecki is Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen. His books include The Sea in Medieval English Literature (2008) and Unwritten Verities: The Making of England’s Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463–1539 (2015). He is currently writing a book on Lancastrian literature for Oxford University Press. Lynn Staley is the Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English at Colgate University. Her most recent publication is The Island Garden: England’s Language of Nation from Gildas to Marvell (2012). Sarah Stanbury is Distinguished Professor in the English Department at the College of the Holy Cross. She is the author of The Visual Object of Desire in Late‐Medieval England (2007), Seeing h Contributor xv the Gawain‐Poet: Description and the Act of Perception (1991), three coedited essay collections, and an edition of Pearl. Her current project is on domestic design in Chaucer. Recent essays include “Quy la?”: architectural interiors, the counting house and Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale” (2016), and “Multilingual lists and Chaucer’s ‘Former Age’” (2015). Robert Swanson is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Ecclesiastical History at the University of Birmingham, and writes widely on the late‐medieval English church. His major publications include Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (2007), Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215–c. 1515 (1995), and Church and Society in Late Medieval England (1989). Irma Taavitsainen is Professor Emerita of English Philology at the University of Helsinki and Deputy Director of the Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English. She is a corpus compiler for Early English Medical Texts (2005, 2010, and forthcoming). Her research focuses on historical pragmatics, corpus linguistics, genre and register variation, and scientific thought styles in medical writing. She has well over 100 publications including peer‐reviewed articles, book chapters, and (co)edited volumes. Alfred Thomas is Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has published several monographs on Czech and British culture, including Anne’s Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310–1420 (1998); A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare (2007); Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory and the City (2010); Shakespeare, Dissent and the Cold War (2014); and Reading Women in Late Medieval Europe: Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer’s Female Audience (2015). Marion Turner is Associate Professor of English at Jesus College, University of Oxford. Her publications include Chaucerian Conflict (2007) and, as editor, A Handbook of Middle English Studies (2013), as well as numerous articles. Her biography of Chaucer – Chaucer: A European Life – is forthcoming in 2019. Michael Van Dussen is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His books include From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages (2012) and The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches (with Michael Johnston, 2015). Linda Ehrsam Voigts, Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri‐Kansas City, is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and the Society of Antiquaries of London. She has published extensively on scientific and medical writing in medieval England (Latin and vernacular) and is, with Patricia Deery Kurtz, editor of Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: an Electronic Reference (eVK2, 10,000 records) and an expanded electronic version of Thorndike and Kibre, Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin (eTK, 30,000 records). Both datasets can be searched online. David Wallace has been Judith Rodin Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania since 1996 and is currently President of the Medieval Academy of America. Relevant publications include Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio (1985); Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron (1991); Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (1997); Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aphra Behn (2004); Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, 2 vols (ed., 2016); and Geoffrey Chaucer: A New Introduction (2017). xvi Te Contributor

Nicholas Watson teaches English at Harvard University and is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. He is the author of several books, editions, and collections and some fifty articles. His interests include visionary writing in England and northern Europe, women’s writing, and the history of vernacular religious textuality, broadly conceived, from the Old English period down to the Reformation. Graham Williams is Senior Lecturer in the History of English at the University of Sheffield. One of his PhD supervisors was Alison Wiggins (Glasgow), herself a student of David Burnley. His most recent publication is a new book, Sincerity in Medieval English Language and Literature (2018). Barry Windeatt is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His most recent books are a parallel‐text edition of the Short and Long Texts of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (2016) and a new translation of both texts for Oxford World’s Classics (2015). He is completing a cultural history of medieval East Anglia. Acknowledgements

I should like to extend heartfelt gratitude to the following people for their unstinting interest, help, and generosity – sometimes direct and practical, sometimes unwitting – in bringing this book to completion: Emma Bennett, who thought that a second edition of the Companion to Chaucer was a good idea; Angela Gallego‐Sala, who understands only too well the vicissitudes and angst that can accompany academic projects; my son Oliver and daughter Louisa, who have maintained their affectionate interest in what their father “really does”; Laura Carosi and Doug Macari who sustained me with delicious Italian meals and the occasional tango at their home; Grazyna Godlewska‐Vernon for therapeutic conversations about books and ideas; Alice Gauthier and Rob Miles whose exciting and beautiful projects in art and music are so energizing; my long‐suffering colleagues in Paris, Frank Mikus and Emily Rae; Manish Luthra who has been the soul of encouragement, patience, and good humor; and Sandra Kerka for her eagle‐eyed attention to the text. Paris November 2018 Line numbers of Chaucer’s works refer to The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn., gen. ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1987).

Abbreviations

Chaucer’s Works ABC An ABC Adam “Adam Scriveyn” Anel Anelida and Arcite Astr Treatise on the Astrolabe BD Book of the Duchess Bo Boece CkP Cook’s Prologue CkT Cook’s Tale ClP Clerk’s Prologue ClT Clerk’s Tale CYP Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue CYT Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale For “Fortune” Form Age “Former Age” FranT Franklin’s Tale FrP Friar’s Prologue FrT Friar’s Tale Gent “Gentilesse” GP General Prologue HF House of Fame KnT Knight’s Tale LGW Legend of Good Women LGWP Prologue to the Legend of Good Women ManP Manciple’s Prologue ManT Manciple’s Tale Mel Melibee MerT Merchant’s Tale xx Abbreviation

MilP Miller’s Prologue MilT Miller’s Tale MkP Monk’s Prologue MkT Monk’s Tale MLE Man of Law’s Epilogue MLI Man of Law’s Introduction MLT Man of Law’s Tale NPP Nun’s Priest’s Prologue NPT Nun’s Priest’s Tale PardI Pardoner’s Introduction PardP Pardoner’s Prologue PardT Pardoner’s Tale ParsP Parson’s Prologue ParsT Parson’s Tale PF Parliament of Fowls PhyT Physician’s Tale PrT Prioress’s Tale Purse “Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse” Ret Retractions Rom Romaunt of the Rose Ros “To Rosemounde” RvP Reeve’s Prologue RvT Reeve’s Tale Scog “Envoy to Scogan” ShT Shipman’s Tale SNP Second Nun’s Prologue SNT Second Nun’s Tale SqT Squire’s Tale SumT Summoner’s Tale TC Troilus and Criseyde Th Sir Thopas ThP Prologue to Sir Thopas Truth “Truth” Ven “Complaint of Venus” WBP Wife of Bath’s Prologue WBT Wife of Bath’s Tale

Other Literary Works Confessio John Gower, Confessio Amantis GGK Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Mirour John Gower, Mirour de l’omme PP William Langland, Piers Plowman Testament Robert Henryson, Testament of Cresseid Troilus William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida Vox John Gower, Vox clamantis [Editions vary: for details see chapter notes.] Abbreviation xxi

Series, Reference Works, and Journals EETS Early English Text Society es extra series (EETS) MED The Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath et al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952–2001) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Colin Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) http://www.oxforddnb.com OED The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, ed. John A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, 20 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) www.oed.com/ os original series (EETS) PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Riverside The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn., gen. ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1987) STC A Short‐Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, First Compiled by A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, 2nd edn, ed. Katharine F. Pantzer, F. S. Ferguson, William A Jackson, and G. R. Redgrave, 3 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1972–91)

The Idea of a Chaucer Companion Peter Brown

From his own reading, Geoffrey Chaucer was familiar with the notion of an authoritative companion providing direction to an individual otherwise lost and uncomprehending. As a model for the House of Fame, Chaucer used the Somnium Scipionis with its commentary by Macrobius, in which Scipio’s grandfather, Africanus, assumes the role of interlocutor. He appears within a dream to explain, from the vantage point of the starry heavens, the political future of Carthage, Scipio’s destiny as its conqueror, and the insignificance of human ambition. The Divine Comedy, which influenced Chaucer throughout his writing career, shows how Virgil leads Dante through hell and purgatory, explaining the twists and turns of divine justice, keeping Dante to the path and gradually effecting his enlightenment. In Boece, Chaucer’s translation of De consola- tione Philosophiae by Boethius, lady Philosophy uses scholastic discourse and force of logic to reason Boethius out of an abject acceptance of his state of imprisonment and into a frame of mind in which an existential freedom becomes possible. All three companions are the best imaginable and yet they have considerable disadvantages and limitations. None is real but instead a figment of a dream vision or an other‐worldly experience. All of them emerge uninvited and unannounced (however welcome their arrival) to intrude on the narrator’s consciousness and cause considerable mental and emotional disturbance. Even their beneficial effects can be felt for only so long: Africanus disappears with Scipio’s dream; Virgil cannot enter paradise and must cede his place to Beatrice, leaving Dante momentarily bereft; and Philosophy can help Boethius only insofar as he is prepared to accept the harsh truth of her arguments. The point in each case is that the subject who benefits from a learned and didactic companion must at some point achieve an independence and intellectual growth that render the continued services of the companion otiose. The companion is not a substitute for personal knowledge, but a means whereby it is accessed, communicated, absorbed, internalized, applied. In his own writing, Chaucer explored the limitations of companions yet further, expressing deep skepticism and ambivalence about their usefulness – a reflection of his complex negotiations

A New Companion to Chaucer, First Edition. Edited by Peter Brown. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 2 Peter Brown with authority more generally, in both its written and social forms. Thus the Book of the Duchess, his first major work, omits a conventional companion or guide altogether, to focus instead on three figures (the dreamer, Alcyone, the man in black) tormented by mental states for which there is no obvious or immediate relief. Here, the work of companionable guide or therapist is displaced – by way of a distinctly unauthoritative narrator – to the reader, who must perforce make connections between the three figures according to the clues that Chaucer has left and thereby devise knowledgeable explanations of the predicaments that face them. When Chaucer does introduce a more traditional companion into another of his dream visions, the House of Fame, it is not as a person but as an eagle. Although effective in securing the rescue of a lost and disori- ented narrator, this companion is garrulous, exults in knowledge for its own sake, and is over- helpful on matters that, though they might be of great academic interest, are not of immediate concern to “Geffrey” as he dangles, terrified, in the bird’s claws. In other genres, too, companions are revealed as ridiculous, ineffectual, or both. The authority of Harry Bailly, self‐appointed majordomo of the Canterbury pilgrims, is undermined on numerous occasions, notably by the Miller and Pardoner. The loquacious Pandarus, companion to Troilus, is silenced once the shal- lowness of his advice is exposed. It is to be hoped that the present book avoids some of the worst shortcomings of Chaucer’s fictive companions. Nevertheless, it acknowledges the force of his misgivings about them. It does not seek to intrude as a declamatory “last word” on any of the topics it covers, but rather to provide stimulating advice and guidance; to identify the terms of current debates, exploring their ramifications and applications; to demonstrate how, in practice, particular ideas and theories affect the interpretation of Chaucer’s texts; and to suggest further routes of inquiry. In the manner both of the literary companions Chaucer read about and of the ones he created, it insists on strenuous engagement with the writings and ideas it discusses, offering its users models of approach and encouraging them to achieve independence of thought as rapidly as possible.

Students All

For all their best attempts to open up and make available the cultural contexts of medieval literature, books such as this can seem to intimidate by the very wealth of expertise on display. But it is as well to bear in mind that, whether the user be a professional academic steeped in specialist lore, a teacher in a college or school, a graduate student researching a thesis, or an undergraduate working on an essay, we are all students and, the further advanced, the more aware of what we do not know. The present volume has been compiled with all such students of Chaucer in mind. It contains enough original research and new syntheses to interest long‐established scholars. At the same time it provides accessible coverage of key contexts for those less well acquainted with Chaucer studies. What can such students of Chaucer expect the Companion to provide? It is predicated on the reasonable assumption that the experience of reading Chaucer’s works prompts numerous questions about the circumstances in which he lived and worked and about the effects of those circumstances on what he wrote and how we now understand it. So each chapter strikes a balance between textual analysis and cultural context, but the kind of context var- ies. Some chapters stay within a literary frame of reference, exploring the genres or modes (such as comedy) available to Chaucer, or placing him in relation to other authors writing at the time, or discussing the production and circulation of texts in a manuscript culture, or The Idea of a Chaucer Companion 3 emphasizing the importance of translation or narrative or style, within late‐medieval literary practice, or looking at his linguistic or stylistic situation. Another, related, group of chapters covers broader cultural topics in order to account for some of the factors that sustained and conditioned him as a writer, such as structures of literary authority; kinds of social organization and their ethical and ideological principles, including those of chivalry; the range of audiences for which Chaucer wrote; and the political nature of London and the court, considered as literary milieux. The largest group of chapters takes as its general area of interest the recovery of those medieval structures of thought, feeling, and imagination, now lost or half buried, that are subtly and sometimes radically different from our own, and that formed Chaucer’s operating assumptions. Religious ideology in all its manifestations – including pilgrimage and Lollardy – is important here. But there are other explanatory systems, with which Christianity had an uneasy relationship, on which Chaucer draws extensively: those of faery, for example, or of the pagan world, or of astrology – the last of these underpinning accounts of the human body and of scientific proce- dures. One of the notable features of all of these systems is that they crossed cultural boundaries: they were not the quaint beliefs of a small society but the general inheritance of the Latin West. Quite how wide Chaucer’s cultural perspectives were is clear from underlying concepts of geography and travel and from his own life history, especially his extensive firsthand experience of France and Italy. Of course, narrative poetry – what Chaucer mainly wrote – is not cultural history but a mul- tifaceted account of individuals living within particular (if imagined) times and places. Thus a further group of chapters draws attention to other expressions of social practice, including those experienced through love, visualizing, the senses, emotions, personal identity, ethnicity and, in relation to these, the different aptitudes and sensibilities of men and women. Whether the student’s curiosity focuses on language, Christianity, eroticism, astrology, concepts of the self, pilgrimage, violence, heresy, London, Europe, or any of a host of other topics, this book will provide food for thought and extend horizons.

Designs on Chaucer

Determining the structure of a book such as this, and of the individual chapters, was no easy matter. Initially, my thoughts were much helped by existing guides and companions to Chaucer’s works, and it seemed sensible to organize the book according to Chaucer’s individual compositions, partitioning the whole according to the customary tripartite schema: Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, dream visions, and minor poems. To do so would have ensured a broad coverage of Chaucer’s works, but it risked alienating users with an overfamiliar approach, and it would have entailed ungainly repetition of key topics. “Love,” for example, or “chivalry” might legitimately have been discussed in relation to a number of different Chaucerian texts. On reflection it seemed better, more exciting, to foreground issues and themes rather than named texts. The result is a novel and intriguing division of content that allows for and encourages movement across different compositions and beyond literary frames of reference. To avoid the problem of repetition in the discussion of texts, contributors were asked to nominate, from the entire range of Chaucer’s works, three passages that they would be prepared to discuss in detail in relation to the chapter title. Clashing choices were thereby identified early and renegotiated, ensuring a properly varied coverage. 4 Peter Brown

Arriving at a satisfactory list of chapter titles caused more headaches. The first step was to draft a comprehensive list of all those topics on which a reader of Chaucer might require discussion. Adding items to the list became a kind of parlor game played with colleagues, students, and, on one occasion, a casual acquaintance on a railway journey from London to Canterbury. The opening gambit was: “If you were reading this or that work by Chaucer, what would you need to know more about in order to make better sense of what he wrote?” The outcome was a list of well over one hundred items. Some had natural affinities with others; some were more difficult to group. Eventually, through a process of trial, error, and resorting, the categories emerged that now form the chapter titles. Thus “community, church, estates, fellowship” were subsumed by the chapter on “Social Structures,” whereas “faery, dreams, folklore” appear under “Other Thought‐worlds.” However, the titles are not mere flags of convenience; on the contrary, they are viable terms of analysis, rooted in current discussions about the nature and meaning of Chaucer’s literary output. As authors have developed their arguments, certain topics have been stressed at the expense of others, but it has seemed more important to promote vigorous argument rather than to attempt an unattainable ideal of complete coverage. Each contributor has produced an original essay that conforms to certain criteria designed to both ground and challenge the reader of Chaucer: an account of existing scholarship in a given area, a discussion of the key issues, an application of those issues to specific passages from Chaucer’s works, and an annotated bibliography of some twenty items for reference and further reading. Every chapter subdivides into a number of distinct sections, and each section is signposted (as in this introduction) so that a user is directed quickly to the pages that are most relevant to a particular area of interest. Where the material covered by one contributor relates to that covered by another, cross‐references are given at the end of the chapter. As such features indicate, the Companion repays browsing. And, just as it does not privilege one kind of user over another, so it attempts to secure a broad equality of treatment for the different chapter topics by placing them within that most leveling of classifications, the alphabet. Alternatively, a student focused on a particular topic, or a specific composition by Chaucer, can turn to the index to discover where to find useful discussions. All line references are to the Riverside Chaucer, cited in the Acknowledgements.

“I make for myself a picture of great detail”

The analogy urged earlier between Chaucer’s fictive companions and this volume cannot be pressed too far. Chaucer and his works have themselves become the terrain – difficult and delightful in turn – in need of a mentored map. Nor does any one contributor attempt to provide an ex cathedra reading of all the contours and features that constitute “Chaucer” in the manner of an Africanus, a Virgil, or a lady Philosophy. Instead, various individuals offer their considered opinions. As in the case of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, there are competing points of view, potential clashes of temperament, and ideological differences – all of which increase the need and opportunity for informed and lively debate. If there is a concept, lying deeper than the idea of a companion, that articulates the kind of essay found in this book, as well as the experience of compiling it, then it might be caught in the words of the quotation in the subheading, used by Milman Parry to describe the process of trying to understand Homeric poetry in its historical context.1 At first glance the statement seems to reflect a straightforward concept of the literary historian as archaeologist, perhaps as restorer of The Idea of a Chaucer Companion 5 a shattered mural, deferential to the inheritance of the past, dedicated to the accumulation of more and more fragments of evidence, and working with the aim of producing an intricate, objective account of a remote society and the place within it of a literary artefact. But implicit in Parry’s words are ideas that suggest a more complex model of inquiry. In the first place, the undertaking is highly reflexive, with a strong personal dimension. The relationship between past and present is effected by means of a subjective agent, “I … myself,” who contributes an individuated slant to the evaluation of empirical data. Then again, the inquirer’s characteristic activity is fabrication, an act of making, an essentially artificial reinvention of the past from the available information. Finally, that reconstruction is itself a representation, a “picture” betraying the hand of its maker but also incorporating selection, foregrounding, emphasis, and all the other artistic techniques that contribute to a convincing and effective portrayal. Once made, the picture becomes the focus of the literary historian’s interest, replacing the original object of inquiry, while at the same time providing an analytical and theoretical frame in which to examine further configurations of text and context. Nor is the scrutiny only in one direction. The relationship between past and present is that of a dialog whereby the modern inquirer asks questions of and through a carefully made picture only to find – disconcert- ingly – that the picture itself interrogates the very basis of her or his own presumptions. In the case of Chaucer, the exploration of half‐forgotten belief systems, and the realization that they were valid working premises in a poetry that had wide appeal, alert us to the relativity of our own assumptions and credos. As the first chapter shows, his reputation has changed its nature quite drastically as successive generations of readers have discovered in his writings features that have responded to their own cultural preoccupations. This New Companion is nothing if not an historical exercise, and an attentive user should take away an enlarged sense of the circumstances in which Chaucer wrote, of the literary possibilities open to him, of the extent to which he was actively engaged with many of the political and religious issues that beset his society. But as well as making Chaucer the occasion for cultural explo- rations of the past, it also highlights the extent to which what Chaucer wrote is itself a precious record of the thoughts and feelings that constituted human experience as he knew it. That record deserves our continuing respect, intellectual interest, and enthusiasm because it is exceptionally rich, complex, and innovative. Capable of sparking flashes of sympathy and recognition across six centuries, of being remarkably present to our reading consciousness, it is nevertheless the record of a culture only half familiar. The other half is alien, a foreign country, and all the more intriguing for that. This book will act as a Baedeker to its deeper exploration and perhaps enable some to become explorers in their own right.

Revising the Companion to Chaucer

The preceding paragraphs are substantially the same as those written for the first Companion to Chaucer, published in 2000 to coincide with the 600th anniversary of Chaucer’s death. Fortunately, the book outlasted the celebrations and has proved to be a valuable and enduring resource. The present volume builds on the Companion’s success by retaining the key features outlined here and many of the original contributors. But 20 years is a longish time in Chaucer studies and so the New Companion reflects more recent developments. By chance there were 29 contributors to the first Companion, equal to the number of pilgrims who set out from the Tabard in the Canterbury Tales. Shepherding the new contingent 6 Peter Brown has at times seemed like organizing the return trip: some pilgrims could not participate because they had reached their destination; some were prevented by ill health or retirement; some had other business to attend to. Yet the majority were enthusiastic to begin a new adven- ture. At the same time a clamor of newcomers, with fresh ideas, jostled alongside the more seasoned travelers. The result is a wholly new but reassuringly familiar book. The names of 23 of the original contributors reappear, writing on self‐same topics. Occasionally, the title of their chapter has changed to reflect new content or a new emphasis: “Authority” (Andrew Galloway) has become “Auctorite,” “Christian Ideologies” (Nicholas Watson) is now “Religion,” and “Contemporary English Writers” (James Simpson) “Richard II.” Three chapters no longer appear: “Crisis and Dissent,” “Games,” and “Modes of Representation.” Others have been shouldered by new contributors: “Afterlife” (now “Afterlives”) by Candice Barrington and Jonathan Hsy; “Geography and Travel” (now “Pilgrimage and Travel”) by Sebastian Sobecki; “Life Histories” (now “Biography”) by Jane Griffiths; and “London” by Peter Guy Brown. A further 12 names brings the total of new arrivals to 18. Two (Barry Windeatt and Graham Williams) kindly revised and extended valuable essays respectively by Derek Brewer (“Chivalry”) and David Burnley (“Language”) who sadly are no longer with us. Daniela Landert joins Irma Taavitsainen as coauthor of “Science.” And the following have written essays on new topics: Alfred Thomas (“Bohemia”), Sarah McNamer (“Emotions”), Kathy Lavezzo (“Ethnicity”), Michael Hanrahan (“Flemings”), Stephen Rigby (“Ideology”), Jenni Nuttall (“Patronage”), Ryan Perry (“Sin”), and Michael van Dussen (“Things”). The result is a volume considerably longer, and intellectually richer, than its predecessor. In some respects the new contributors have had an easier ride than their fellow‐travelers, who were faced with making a critical assessment of an essay they had written two decades before. Revision of one’s own published work is a ticklish business and various strategies are possible: leave the original work intact and add a section taking account of current trends; improve the original by finding better ways to express its ideas; ditch the essay entirely and start from scratch. All of these approaches, and others, occur in the following pages. The important common factor is that all of the older essays have been thoroughly refreshed and stand alongside the new ones as if newly minted. To a remarkable extent all of the essays, new or old, are in dialog and enjoy con- nectivity – which is not to say that they are in agreement, or that there are not debates to be had, and dissonant voices. But then that is the nature of the journey, and it invites participation.

Note

1 Milman Parry, “The historical method in literary Collected Papers of Milman Parry, ed. Adam Parry criticism,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 38 (1936), 778–82 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 408–13 at 411. at 780, repr. in The Making of Homeric Verse: The